Author Topic: Pronunciation that makes you cringe  (Read 147193 times)

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #575 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:20:57 pm »
If we're speaking English then, as far I care, we should use the anglicized pronunciation rather than mangling foreign pronunciation with comedy lisps and the like. Quite often it just sounds affected.

What really grates is people affecting the Castilian lisp for chorizo but starting it with a hard English 'tch'

 ??? what should it be? Sh- or K- ?
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #576 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:23:27 pm »
Is it only British people who amuse themselves by trying to pronounce foreign words authentically (which generally failing, unless they're posh, in which case they do it on purpose in the hope of making the rest of us seem foolish)?

Certainly, the French and Italians don't seem to bother. I think we should follow their lead. Chorizo in my house is chor-eez-o and it's fucking staying that way.

I would have expected chor-aye-zo, but never mind.

I have a Scots-Polish chum who was born in France and first went to Poland in his mid-twenties.  Before he went, Warsaw was Warsaw to both of us. After he came back I mentioned Warsaw and he bellowed "Varshava!" at me.  But then, he's been a Tory all his life.

It's not that the French just don't bother. They actually take great pride in completely distorting foreign names. London becomes "Londres", and Warsaw becomes "Varsovie".

Apparently this is due to the English swallowing the end of the word, leaving others to make up their own. The written words came later, with Londres even pre-dates London.  The S, though, is admitted to be spurious.

http://andresordes.e-monsite.com/pages/london-et-pourquoi-londres.html
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #577 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:27:11 pm »
If we're speaking English then, as far I care, we should use the anglicized pronunciation rather than mangling foreign pronunciation with comedy lisps and the like. Quite often it just sounds affected.

What really grates is people affecting the Castilian lisp for chorizo but starting it with a hard English 'tch'
I say it like this. But that’s how I learned it. To say it otherwise would be an affectation on my part.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #578 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:29:17 pm »
If we're speaking English then, as far I care, we should use the anglicized pronunciation rather than mangling foreign pronunciation with comedy lisps and the like. Quite often it just sounds affected.

What really grates is people affecting the Castilian lisp for chorizo but starting it with a hard English 'tch'

 ??? what should it be? Sh- or K- ?

https://youtu.be/yNM8rN7vf2w

(closer to 'sh' than 'tch', I'd say)
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #579 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:34:54 pm »
This pronunciation thing does seem to be a class signifier. Upper class uberposhos will deliberately mispronounce, middlers and aspirationals will bump for what they believe is authenticity and a make a big fuss of doing so and reminding others that they're doing it wrong. Those the at the bottom don't care, they're on their fifteenth pint of San Miguel in Ma-lager.

I don't think that's strictly true, given the amount of abuse that you can get for speaking too posh in certain contexts.  Northerners will do it to anyone speaking RP, of course, but southerners will latch onto authentic pronunciation of foreign words as a poshness signifier (unless you can plead some sort of foreignness).

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #580 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:42:41 pm »
I confess that I've never heard anyone British pronounce chorizo that way. It always comes out as a comedy (I use the word advisedly) Allo Allo accent. Once in Bingley our waitress did a rather splendid chor-IT-toh! which was delivered with such verve that I feared she was about to fight a bull or commence the flamenco mid-order. I can't really capture it though, because it was also in broad Yorkshirese. She didn't, unfortunately, start dancing and singing and the only bovine was plated.

Come to think of it, I'd like to hear Italians Talk Cockney, the first of my podcasts in Making Foreigns Talk Proper series.

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #581 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:52:25 pm »
This pronunciation thing does seem to be a class signifier. Upper class uberposhos will deliberately mispronounce, middlers and aspirationals will bump for what they believe is authenticity and a make a big fuss of doing so and reminding others that they're doing it wrong. Those the at the bottom don't care, they're on their fifteenth pint of San Miguel in Ma-lager.

I don't think that's strictly true, given the amount of abuse that you can get for speaking too posh in certain contexts.  Northerners will do it to anyone speaking RP, of course, but southerners will latch onto authentic pronunciation of foreign words as a poshness signifier (unless you can plead some sort of foreignness).

Reverse posh is as bad as forward posh, you're still socially weaponising pronunciation. Probably I have a chip on my shoulder because I grew up down a coal mine speaking a near impenetrable dialect of English and learned all my words out of books, so really I could only manage a stab at phonetic pronunciation. Added to the fact I can't talk proper anyway and have a bit of a weird speech thing where I just can't pronounce some words as my brain insists on breaking them into linear phonetic units (for instance, Appalachian, episcopal, pheromone) so by the time I've sussed out the actual pronunciation they're all out of my mouth.

Which means a lifetime of being corrected which isn't at all annoying.

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #582 on: 03 June, 2019, 01:58:36 pm »
And then there's AC Milan, an Italian football club which for historical reasons uses the English name of the city. Do you use the English pronunciation of the English name, or the Italian "Meeelan" (as the locals do)?
I didn't know that Milan was the actual name. I'd always wondered why Polish football commentators talked about Inter Mediolan, that being the Polish name of the city, but AC Milan, neither Polish nor Italian. (They pronounce Milan as if it were a Polish word – short i but more like a short "ee" than an English "i" – but then they would do, because they are even if it is not.)
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #583 on: 03 June, 2019, 02:00:57 pm »
If we're speaking English then, as far I care, we should use the anglicized pronunciation rather than mangling foreign pronunciation with comedy lisps and the like. Quite often it just sounds affected.

What really grates is people affecting the Castilian lisp for chorizo but starting it with a hard English 'tch'

 ??? what should it be? Sh- or K- ?

https://youtu.be/yNM8rN7vf2w

(closer to 'sh' than 'tch', I'd say)

Something wrong with my ears.
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that's not science, it's semantics.

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #584 on: 03 June, 2019, 02:02:06 pm »
Added to the fact I can't talk proper anyway and have a bit of a weird speech thing where I just can't pronounce some words as my brain insists on breaking them into linear phonetic units (for instance, Appalachian, episcopal, pheromone) so by the time I've sussed out the actual pronunciation they're all out of my mouth.
Wasn't "Appalachian" the second album by Episcopal Pheromone? It was rubbish.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #585 on: 03 June, 2019, 02:55:35 pm »
If we're speaking English then, as far I care, we should use the anglicized pronunciation rather than mangling foreign pronunciation with comedy lisps and the like. Quite often it just sounds affected.

What really grates is people affecting the Castilian lisp for chorizo but starting it with a hard English 'tch'

 ??? what should it be? Sh- or K- ?

https://youtu.be/yNM8rN7vf2w

(closer to 'sh' than 'tch', I'd say)

Try this: https://forvo.com/word/chorizo/#es
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citoyen

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #586 on: 03 June, 2019, 03:58:34 pm »
Something wrong with my ears.

When you hear it being pronounced the way I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #587 on: 03 June, 2019, 04:10:30 pm »
Football club names are an odd case. Napoli play in Naples. Fiorentina play in Florence. Slavia Prague play in Praha. Steaua Bucharest play in Bucuresti.

And Bayern Munich play in München, which is in Bavaria.

Unless they are playing in Monaco (or Monaco di Baviera, to avoid confusion with any other Monaco).
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #588 on: 03 June, 2019, 05:02:29 pm »
Something wrong with my ears.

When you hear it being pronounced the way I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
It does sound more like an English ch than sh to me (both the youtube example and those on forvo). But it's definitely not quite either, which is probably part of the reason it's difficult for English speakers.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #589 on: 03 June, 2019, 06:29:16 pm »
Something wrong with my ears.

When you hear it being pronounced the way I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
It does sound more like an English ch than sh to me (both the youtube example and those on forvo). But it's definitely not quite either, which is probably part of the reason it's difficult for English speakers.

Yes, there's a difference, but even the IPA guide says the closest English sound is as in choose (not shoes), so it's not really cringeworthy. Pronouncing it as a proper soft sh- might be.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #590 on: 03 June, 2019, 06:36:06 pm »
Football club names are an odd case. Napoli play in Naples. Fiorentina play in Florence. Slavia Prague play in Praha. Steaua Bucharest play in Bucuresti.

And Bayern Munich play in München, which is in Bavaria.

Unless they are playing in Monaco (or Monaco di Baviera, to avoid confusion with any other Monaco).
My tame German says the team is Bayern München.

I guess in English-speaking places the München is translated to Munich but it’s not in use here.
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Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #591 on: 03 June, 2019, 06:37:16 pm »
tʃ is the same IPA symbol I remember learning for an English ch sound. But that was 20 years ago so I might be misremembering and/or the notation might have changed a little. In any case, cringeworthiness is more a personal reaction than a hard and fast standard. I'm not sure even "kway" for quay (as in early post of mine) makes me cringe: it might amuse me or make me ponder the strange ways we spell words. (Though if I ever have to say quinoa it makes me cringe a bit: it either sounds poncy or mistaken. I guess if I actually ate the stuff, "keenwah" would sound right, and if I'd never heard of it, "kwinoa" would be the obvious way to say it.)
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citoyen

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #592 on: 03 June, 2019, 07:02:34 pm »
I guess in English-speaking places the München is translated to Munich but it’s not in use here.

Yes, that’s the point - no one in England calls them Bavaria Munich.
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citoyen

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #593 on: 03 June, 2019, 07:08:14 pm »
Something wrong with my ears.

When you hear it being pronounced the way I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
It does sound more like an English ch than sh to me (both the youtube example and those on forvo). But it's definitely not quite either, which is probably part of the reason it's difficult for English speakers.

Yes, there's a difference, but even the IPA guide says the closest English sound is as in choose (not shoes), so it's not really cringeworthy. Pronouncing it as a proper soft sh- might be.

It’s all very well for you to say it’s not cringeworthy but wait until you hear someone say it the way I’ve heard it said.

Which you obviously haven’t or you’d know what I meant.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #594 on: 03 June, 2019, 07:59:56 pm »
I'm sure I've heard that foopball team from Gelsenkirchen referred to as Schalke null vier ???
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #595 on: 03 June, 2019, 08:52:05 pm »
Something wrong with my ears.

When you hear it being pronounced the way I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
It does sound more like an English ch than sh to me (both the youtube example and those on forvo). But it's definitely not quite either, which is probably part of the reason it's difficult for English speakers.

Yes, there's a difference, but even the IPA guide says the closest English sound is as in choose (not shoes), so it's not really cringeworthy. Pronouncing it as a proper soft sh- might be.

It’s all very well for you to say it’s not cringeworthy but wait until you hear someone say it the way I’ve heard it said.

Which you obviously haven’t or you’d know what I meant.
'koritzo'? I'm not sure I've heard that, but it's logical, given that Italian tends to be higher regarded (in food at least) than Spanish.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #596 on: 03 June, 2019, 09:03:05 pm »
Everyone in financial services pronounces "leverage" the USian way  :facepalm:

I still can't work out why Stephen Rea also pronounces "lever" the  American way in "V for Vendetta".  It really grates.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #597 on: 04 June, 2019, 12:21:53 am »
Everyone in financial services pronounces "leverage" the USian way  :facepalm:

I tend to regard that one as a useful warning.  But then I was trying (without much success) to get "soddering" adopted for the unsatisfying lead-free version of the process.

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #598 on: 04 June, 2019, 12:45:34 pm »
Everyone in financial services pronounces "leverage" the USian way  :facepalm:

I think this is SOP among the kind of management wonks who use the hateful verb.  Not sure I've ever heard it pronounced otherwise, though at the kind of meetings where it customarily cropped up I was usually in la-la-not-listening mode after three minutes.
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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #599 on: 04 June, 2019, 12:50:38 pm »
I'd always assumed leverAGE for the financial sense can LEVERage for the actual levering. Though I probably made this up in a manner so convincing that I can no longer accept another explanation.